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(Betty Mallard now deceased, story given with permission from her husband Mr Anthony Mallard.)

Story typed by a UCN Community Volunteer.

During the war, I was five years old, my mum told me that when they started to give out the gas masks I got very frightened. In fact early one morning, I got a chair, and whilst they were a sleep I undid the door, and went walking in my nightie up Freehold St. to Marefair. When mum found me I was with a Police man, who had stopped me. I was pointing up to the sky saying "Don’t let them get me, please don’t let them get me", in my five year old childish voice.

We used to have to get up about 1 am when the sirens went off, when the German planes were coming over to bomb places like Coventry. Yet we still had to attend school at 9 am. It didn’t matter how long we’d had to stay up waiting for the all clear signal. We would go to a house with a big cellar, where they had a camp bed, where I was usually allowed to lay down and sleep. My Nan and Pap Lineham also came. There was a lot of the family there on nights like these. One night the Germans dropped flares which made things look as bright as day light. I remember mum came running along with me and I noticed she had put a pair of dad’s trousers on bad to front. She’d put them on for quickness and I don’t think mum was too worried about what she looked like under the circumstances.

Then there were the days of the Yanks. Dad used to bid them back to the house saying "Poor devils have got no place to go Win". First there was Johnny Babson who came from Massachusetts. He was in the Amercian Army Air Force. He was stationed at Neither Heyford. He was very nice and one day a big parcel was delivered to our house. When mum opened it a card fell out. It just read, 'thanks from one mother to another’. Inside (my brother Billy’s eyes lit up, as did mine), there was a pile of Bugs Bunny comics, packets of salted peanuts and loads of 'candy' bars. These were such a treat as we were being rationed back then. We only had two ounces of sweets a week. You can imagine how lovely this was for us. While Johnny was here he gave me the address of another ten year old girl called Nancy Wall who lived near him. To this day we still write to each other.

The next was Bill Cassey who was from Oregon. He was nice but a little on the wild side. He said he remembered his grand mother sitting outside a wigwam, so he must have been part Indian. One day I had a cold and he said, "Have some ‘Vicks’ up your nose", with this he gave a whoop and chased me round the table with some 'Vicks' on his fingers. He caught me and plastered it up my nose in perfusion. I must admit though the cold did go!

One night I was woken by a rat-a-tat-tat sound. Billy had also woken up. We hung out head out of the window as the noise started to getting louder. We saw to our horror a plane going down and crashing near by. The ‘rat-a-tat-tatting’ was the bullets going off in the heat, as the plane was a ball of fire. It crashed in Gold St. It was such a terrible mess. Mum had seen it too, coming towards her as she lay in bed. It was such a terrible fright for her.

One thought comes to mind, Billy and myself used to attend St Peter’s church Sunday school. One day whilst inside we had some stamps given for attendance. While Billy was putting his in his book, John Steel his friend smiled and showed his book. The caption read 'Praise the Lord' and he’d written underneath it ‘and pass the ammunition’ a song of WW2. Well I couldn’t help but giggle. I wasn’t very old at that time. Up came Miss Barker an awesome sight, she was a Victorian lady dressed in a long black coat, which was high necked up to her throat, with a large black hat. She got hold of me and said "You blasphemous child." Shaking me, she put me out to go home. It was not really my fault, but I did have a giggle as I was like that then. You see I never did like it and I didn’t go back after that day for a long time.

Later I went to the Blue Coat School in Kingswell Street. I was eleven years old. On Sundays we had to attend Sunday school either at St Katherine’s church of All Saints church in the town centre. Miss Nobles was the head mistress and Miss Brentnall was the cookery and housewifery teacher. Miss Brentnall took it into her head that she didn’t like Betty Waterfield. Mind you I didn’t like her either. We had to do the fires. This meant we had to go to school at six am, get buckets of coal and fire-lighters into all the rooms. We never had a caretaker back then, so we had to clean out all the ash from the previous days fires. I went in one horrible cold and wet morning with my friend Jean. She did the downstairs fires, I did the upstairs and the kitchen, where I cleaned out all the ashes, black leaded the grates and polished all the brasses. Then I laid a good fires of wood and coal. Before long it was all going merrily, everything was all spick and span and I felt so proud of it all. The other girls came in at 8:30 and stood around the fire warming their hands and saying "Oh, what a lovely fire". Then in came Miss Brentnall. She looked at the fire, then she looked at me, looking pleased. She immediately took up the shovel and started to shovel out the fire. This caused black smoke and ash to fly everywhere. While doing this she was screaming at me, "Eight black marks for wasting coal." She knew that we had a point system and the eight black marks meant that you got the cane. I was sent down for it. Miss Nobles gave the cane and she asked me why I had been sent to her so early in the day. I had to tell her that I’d given eight black marks for wasting coal. I stood there with my hands outstretched and the swish across them was too painful to describe. The cane hurt in more ways than one as the other girls had cried out, "What a shame Betty had made such a lovely fire" , but all this fell on deaf ears.

We used to launder washing there too, we would do aprons, towels etc. There was no boiling we just laid them on long table tops and scrubbed them with a brush and a bar of soap. Miss Brentnall would walk past and hold them up to the light and scan over them. More times than not, she would throw them on the floor screaming "Do them again!" I thought she was a bit 'well loopy'!

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